When Jana wakes from her afternoon nap and, so happy to see me, gives me her radiant full-face smile, I smile back and feel on my own face the smile you used to give me when I woke up in the morning. Or, when Jana does something particularly cute, I’ll glance up at Gary, and in the look we exchange I see the one I remember crossing between you and dad at opposite ends of the dinner table. It was a look full of feelings I never knew until now.
When I hold Jana close to me and look down to see my hand tight across her chest. Or when I tuck a blanket around her while she sleeps and touch the skin of her cheek. I see your hands (those hardworking hands with their smooth oval nails, steady and capable and caring) doing the same things. Then I feel as if some of the love and security you gave to me through those hands is now in mine, as I pass that Iove on to Jana。
The other day Jana fell asleep against my arm. I must have spent fifteen or twenty minutes staring at her, marveling at the wheat color of her hair, the suppleness of her skin, her perfect tiny red mouth, moving now and then in sleep. What a rush I felt, of love and wonder, of care and luck, and more. I suddenly remembered something I saw on your face last summer, when I was home on a visit shortly after Jana’s birth.
We were sitting on the glider swing in the backyard. It was a lovely morning, cool there in the shade, and the air was full of fragrance from your rose garden. I was holding Jana, who seemed to enjoy the gentle movement of the swing.
But I wasn’t enjoying anything just then. I’d had a rough night. Jana was six weeks old and had been up every few hours. I, fretful and nervous as only a new mother can be, had been having trouble falling back to sleep between her feedings. I was cranky and tired, and not feeling cheerful about this motherhood business at all.
Sitting on the glider, we talked—or rather, I talked, letting loose my load of anxiety and frustrations on you. An